TY - JOUR
T1 - Beautiful…but at What Cost?
T2 - An Examination of Externalities in Geographic Vehicle Routing
AU - Johnson, Isaac L
AU - Henderson, J
AU - Schöning, Johannes
AU - Hecht, Brent Jaron
N1 - doi: 10.1145/3090080
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3090080&CFID=996385089&CFTOKEN=72751423
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Millions of people use platforms such as Google Maps to search for routes to their desired destinations. Recently, researchers and mapping platforms have shown growing interest in optimizing routes for criteria other than travel time, e.g. simplicity, safety, and beauty. However, despite the ubiquity of algorithmic routing and its potential to define how millions of people move around the world, very little is known about the externalities that arise when adopting these new optimization criteria, e.g. potential redistribution of traffic to certain neighborhoods and increased route complexity (with its associated risks). In this paper, we undertake the first controlled examination of these externalities, doing so across multiple mapping platforms, alternative optimizations, and cities. We find, for example, that scenic routing (i.e. “beauty”-optimized routing) would remove vehicles from highways, greatly increase traffic around parks, and, in certain cases, do the same for high-income areas. Our results also highlight that the interaction between routing criteria and urban structure is complex and effects vary from city to city, an important consideration for the growing literature on alternative routing strategies. Finally, to address the lack of open implementations of alternative routing algorithms and controlled routing evaluation frameworks, we are releasing our alternative routing and evaluation platform with this paper.
AB - Millions of people use platforms such as Google Maps to search for routes to their desired destinations. Recently, researchers and mapping platforms have shown growing interest in optimizing routes for criteria other than travel time, e.g. simplicity, safety, and beauty. However, despite the ubiquity of algorithmic routing and its potential to define how millions of people move around the world, very little is known about the externalities that arise when adopting these new optimization criteria, e.g. potential redistribution of traffic to certain neighborhoods and increased route complexity (with its associated risks). In this paper, we undertake the first controlled examination of these externalities, doing so across multiple mapping platforms, alternative optimizations, and cities. We find, for example, that scenic routing (i.e. “beauty”-optimized routing) would remove vehicles from highways, greatly increase traffic around parks, and, in certain cases, do the same for high-income areas. Our results also highlight that the interaction between routing criteria and urban structure is complex and effects vary from city to city, an important consideration for the growing literature on alternative routing strategies. Finally, to address the lack of open implementations of alternative routing algorithms and controlled routing evaluation frameworks, we are releasing our alternative routing and evaluation platform with this paper.
M3 - Special issue
SN - 2474-9567
VL - 1
JO - Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
JF - Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
IS - 2
M1 - 15
ER -